BEATRICE ACTED as if she was some great friend from the past, but there was nothing there—it was all pretend: the knowing glances, the nodding, the eagerness. And now she showed up at the exact moment that Abra’s mom forgot who she was? Abra’s mind spun. She wasn’t scared. She was methodically working the puzzle in front of her, trying this piece here, that piece there. And at the root of it all was Beatrice. She knew that now. Beatrice and Koli Naal.
“We should go outside,” Abra said to Beatrice as they stood there in the house, her mother still washing dishes, humming to herself. Abra knew a confrontation with Beatrice was coming, and she thought it would be best to be outdoors, away from her mother and her baby brother, wherever he was. But Beatrice wouldn’t let her control the situation.
“Let’s go upstairs first,” Beatrice said with that same plastic smile on her face. “I’ve never seen your room!”
Abra’s mind raced, and she glanced at her mom to see if she’d react to Beatrice asking about her room, but if she heard it, she didn’t seem alarmed by the fact. Abra still had the sword, and she held it behind her back. It felt alive again, the sword, and there was a tingling sensation in her hand. She pictured her room, the atlas on the floor, a few of the notes spread out around it, and she didn’t want to take Beatrice up there.
“Let’s go outside, B,” Abra insisted. “I’ll show you around.”
“Young lady,” her mother said in a motherly voice, “you are absolutely not going anywhere until you change your clothes and put away that stick you’re carrying behind your back. I see it, so stop pretending it’s not there. Remember the extra set of clothes your mother sent for you to keep here? You go straight upstairs and change immediately. Your mother would kill me if she knew I was letting you wander around in your nightgown.”
Abra’s mother gave her one of those looks that said, See? You can’t get anything past me.
“Okay,” Abra said hesitantly, starting up the stairs, her face hot with anger, her mind racing. Her world was falling apart, and all because of Koli Naal, all because of the sword and the Tree and everything else. For the first time, she felt defeated. Part of her wanted out. Part of her wished someone would draw the curtain between the normal world and this new one, and she wanted to forget about it. Someone else could kill the Tree. Someone else could protect people from living forever. She wanted to be a regular girl again.
But that was just part of her. And it wasn’t the part that won out—she was too angry, too determined to defeat Koli Naal. This was just the beginning, she knew that, and she was ready to fight.
About halfway up the stairs she heard Beatrice.
“Thank you, Mrs. Miller, I’ll just go up and see how Abra’s coming along,” she said in a polite voice. Abra heard her coming up the stairs.
“Please wait outside while I change,” Abra called over her shoulder before running into her bedroom, slamming the door, and leaning against it. This Beatrice was very persistent, whoever she really was. Whatever she was. Abra felt like Beatrice was inside her head, or at least trying to get there. Abra recognized this was a strange thing to think and tried to push the thought away. But even in doing that she encountered Beatrice in there somewhere, or trying to get in. She was like a rat outside a house in the middle of winter, sniffing around the basement windows, climbing up the downspouts, investigating every nook and cranny, every crack and ledge. That was Beatrice, and Abra found herself mentally running around, making sure all the doors were locked, all the holes stuffed closed.
Abra stood in her room for a few seconds, catching her breath. She dashed to her dresser and pulled out some clothes. She dressed automatically, her mind elsewhere, thinking about her mom, her dad, her little brother.
She could see Beatrice’s shadow moving back and forth, slowly, along the crack under the door. It gave her the feeling that it was no longer Beatrice out there, but someone entirely different. This didn’t make sense, not at all, and she pushed the thought to the back of her mind as she pulled on her jeans, socks, and sneakers.
“Almost ready!” Abra said. Beatrice didn’t say anything back to her.
Abra pulled a T-shirt over her head, then moved quickly to clean up the atlas and the papers. She put the sword on the floor for a moment, but before picking up the articles she stopped and stared at the open atlas. The second Tree, the one Tennin had told her about in the dream, was in New Orleans. How was she supposed to get there? She wondered about her uncle who lived there, and how long it would take her to walk a thousand miles, or however far it was. She wondered if the Trees normally appeared in such rapid succession, only a few years apart. If she interpreted the atlas and the articles correctly, it seemed like there were usually decades, sometimes centuries, between the appearances of the Tree.
“Ouch!” someone shouted.
Abra turned and there stood Beatrice, holding her palm, the sword at her feet. Abra stared at the open door, wondering how she had managed to come in so quietly.
“That thing burned me!” she squealed.
“Shh, shh,” Abra said, racing over and closing the door before her mother heard them and came up to investigate. “You can’t touch that. What are you doing in here? I asked you to wait outside.”
“I got bored,” Beatrice said quietly, tears pooling in her eyes. “And why do you have a sword? In your room?”
Abra shrugged. “It’s a long story. Are you okay?”
Beatrice nodded, still staring at the sword.
“Come here. Let me see your hand.”
Abra held Beatrice’s hand and glanced quickly at her face. Beatrice’s palm was red, and for a moment Abra was back in the forest at the end of the Road to Nowhere, the fire raging around them, Sam’s hands badly burned. Abra had a clear vision of time, how it moves constantly, not linear but swirling like a tornado, picking up things from here and there, past and future, and mixing them together until you can’t tell yesterday from tomorrow.
This is what it feels like to lose your mind, Abra thought. She felt displaced, unhinged, floating outside of hours and minutes and seconds. Outside of years. She was, for that moment, a No One. She was certain her father wouldn’t recognize her either. She didn’t have a home. She didn’t belong anywhere.
“Go to the bathroom at the end of the hall,” Abra said absently, her voice coming out robotically. “Run some cold water over it for a minute or two. If it still hurts, I’ll get some salve from downstairs.”
Beatrice left the room like a chastised puppy. She clutched her hand as if it might fall off. If Beatrice and Koli Naal were in this together, or somehow one and the same, what was she supposed to do?
Abra stood there quietly until she heard the water turn on, the small rushing sound, and she found it strange, the different sounds water can make: the rushing of the river, the tapping of the rain on her window, the stillness of the puddle from the fair the other night, the one that looked like an escape hatch into a faraway galaxy with constellations the shape of a Ferris wheel. And now there was the soothing cold water running from a faucet.
She picked up the sword and turned back to the atlas. That’s when the sword began to get heavier. Abra stared at it in her hand, and because she didn’t understand what was happening, at first it felt like a betrayal. Like the turning away of a once-close friend. It grew heavier and heavier until she had to rest the point of it against the floor, but the point dug into the carpet farther, farther, and it became so heavy that she had to lay it down. Her fingers nearly became trapped under it because the increase in weight happened so quickly. Soon it was pressing deep into the floor and she panicked, because what if it continued? What if it became so heavy that it broke through into the living room below her?
The journal was right there at the point of the sword, still opened to New Orleans with its two numbers. The sword crept forward, quivering like a divining rod, the point growing closer to the dot on the map that signified the city. Abra tried to pick it up again, but she couldn’t—she could only hold on to it, and still it moved toward the atlas. She had a sense that something huge was about to happen, and something in her didn’t want it to happen. That’s the part of her that pulled on the sword, pulled in vain as it crept those few inches, pointing at New Orleans.
Two things happened at once. Beatrice came running into the room, still holding her hand, shouting as if trying to stop whatever was happening. She grabbed Abra’s shoulder and Abra tried to push her away, but Beatrice held on tight. Her strong grip was no child’s grip. Her fingers were icy, digging into Abra’s flesh, threatening to shatter her collarbone.
At the same time, the very point of the sword touched the dot of New Orleans in the atlas.
A flash of light.
The sound of Beatrice screaming.
Abra felt a tremor through her body, like a shudder when you swallow a piece of slimy food you didn’t want to eat.
Everything went still.